The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces (4 page)

I made the long painful climb to my feet. I had danced the night away. That much I could tell from the way my legs felt. One knee was torn from my pants. My wallet was in the wrong pocket.

My mustache was missing.

Meaning, I supposed, I wasn't Skylight Howells today.

Still wearing my dancing shoes, I punctuated my way to the can with guilty little heel-toe heel-toe taps. My talking shoes whispered, you'll be coming back (never again), oh, yes, you'll be coming back for more. It's just a matter of time.

I splashed water in my face. Used the electric razor. Showered. Since I was back in the office I guess it made some sense to be Sky again. I got another mustache from the top drawer of my disguise cabinet (a Goodwill chest of drawers, once blue, now mostly chipped white—the thing always made me think of an egg except that it was rectangular).

I walked back into the office and got the coffeepot and rinsed it out in the washroom. Once the coffee started dripping, the happy sound and smell made me feel a little better.

The feeling didn't last. I'd no sooner poured myself a cup and settled back down behind my desk when the door banged open and Lieutenant Frank Wallace and his burly sidekick Marvin Zivon walked right in.

These bozos made the perfect cop couple. A smoldering little guy and his muscle man. Wired and short and quick, Frank Wallace always made me think of a weasel. He wore his blond hair combed up like some kind of teen idol from an old beach movie. He'd worn it that way even as a little boy, and I figured maybe he was born with it already styled. Marvin, on the other hand, looked like a big dumb guy trying really hard not to look so dumb. Big boyish face with a scattering of freckles across his nose. Sandy hair cut short emphasizing a slight point to his head. Oddly, Marvin wasn't dumb at all. In fact, in a mental wrestling match with Frank, Marvin would probably come out on top, but that wouldn't matter. Frank had the power of will and would always win.

My first thought was that Elsie had let the cat out of the bag and told Frank she'd hired me to follow him. Since I hadn't seen him doing anything, I hoped that was not the case. One of my major goals in life was to slap one big incriminating eight-by-ten glossy after another down on a desk under his nose. I wanted to see his eyes go wide, see the horrible realization of doom blossom on his face when he figured out what the pictures meant. Unfortunately there were no photos yet. And if Elsie had confessed and Frank was in my office to hassle me, why had he brought Marvin Zivon?

This was more likely an official visit and, in their official capacity, I doubted they would rough me up, but I couldn't help thinking of all the times back in school when I'd taken the long way home to avoid them and all the times taking the long way home hadn't worked. The word around town was these former high school bad guys had become pretty good cops. Who would have believed it?

Back in school, everyone assumed Frank would end up in prison or maybe the army. Marvin would be bailed out by his mother who owned the Whisper Café on the downtown mall. The Whisper Café was the place to be seen after a concert at the Hult, for example, the place for dangerously complicated coffee drinks and fancy cakes, little dishes of spiced shrimp, quail eggs, stuff like that. No one expected Marvin to follow Frank onto the police force. Some people expected
me
to follow Frank onto the police force, but that's another story.

“Marvin,” I said, “Francis. What's up?”

“Cut the crap, Brian,” Frank said. His face had gone red when I called him “Francis.” Back in the fifth grade, I'd taken my revenge by telling everyone “Frank” was really short for “Francis” and people believed me, and Frank couldn't get away from it. He even went around one day with his birth certificate showing kids on the playground that his name was “Franklin Wallace.” Didn't help. In junior high he tried to get everyone to call him “Wally” but no one would.

He sat down in the white plastic client chair in front of my desk. “I have some questions.”

Marvin stood just behind and a little to one side of Frank, showing me his repertoire of dirty looks. He was getting pretty good at it. Maybe he'd been practicing in front of his mirror.

I smiled at him, and he automatically returned the smile, realized what he'd done, and went back to giving me the evil eye. His standing there like a trained gorilla made me nervous as hell, but I tried not to show it.

“Always happy to cooperate, Lieutenant,” I said.

“I'm happy to hear that, Brian,” Frank said. “I want to know what you have to do with Prudence Deerfield. Did she tell you where her brother is?”

“No,” I said. “She said she didn't know where he was.”

“And so you're looking for him?”

“I'm looking for him.”

“You don't want to be holding out on me, Brian,” he said. “What is this Skylight Howells baloney anyway?”

“His folks took the sixties way too seriously,” Marvin said. He walked over to my printer and bent at the waist to peer down behind it.

“What? They waited till he was in high school to name him?” Frank said. “Or maybe one day everyone started calling him Brian Dobson and it just sort of caught on?”

Confusion swamped me for a moment. “It's the name of the agency, Frank,” I said.

“You must have done a lot of research to come up with something so lame.”

“Hey,” Marvin said, “maybe there was this secret government project and Brian was kidnapped and replaced by an alien baby and Skylight was the code name for the whole business.”

“What are you talking about?” Frank twisted around to look over at Marvin.

I had to wonder. Did Marvin know something? Was the reason he seemed so suddenly agitated not that he'd just said something stupid but that he'd just let something slip?

“Nice cable you got on your printer,” Marvin said.

“What?” I said. “You think I wouldn't have replaced the cable after strangling Gerald Moffitt with the old one?”

“Just checking, Brian,” Marvin said. He walked back to his station behind Frank.

“Maybe you should open a Pee Eye booth at the Saturday market, Brian,” Frank said. Yes, my spelling reflects just the way he said it.

The Saturday market was where our local artists and craftspeople sold their goods. If you walked down to the end of the hall outside my office, you could look out the window and see it on Saturdays.

“You could charge a nickel,” Frank said.

I decided to see if I could get Frank off my ass. “How did you guys know Ms. Deerfield came to me in the first place?”

“That's not your concern,” Frank said. “What I want is for you to tell me everything you know about the murders.”

“Murders?” I asked. “Like more than one?” My turn to be knocked off balance.

“You don't watch the news?” Frank looked up at Marvin. “You see a TV in here, Sergeant?”

“I don't see a TV,” Marvin said.

“You don't seem very well informed for a hotshot Pee Eye,” Frank said.

“I've been busy,” I said. “So who else was killed? And what makes you think it has anything to do with the murder of Gerald Moffitt.”

That got a laugh. The two of them spent a couple of minutes chuckling. Maybe I'm a funny guy. Maybe I should go on stage. Scratch that. Forget the stage. A sudden picture of what I might have done yesterday at the Gotta Dance flooded into my mind. I took a deep breath and got myself under control.

“You crack me up, Brian,” Frank said.

“Yeah,” Marvin said. “You're a riot.”

I looked Marvin in the eye. “Your mother uses low-fat cheese in her cheesecake,” I said.

He leaped over the desk, took me by the throat with one giant hand and slapped me silly with the other. Well, no, actually he didn't. In fact, while I could tell he was really steamed, I could also see he was adrift with confusion. On the one hand low fat was healthy and therefore good, on the other hand his mother's cheesecake was known far and wide for its wickedly rich taste. He finally came down on the side of being insulted. “She does not!”

Frank ignored my little exchange with his partner. “It's the state of the bodies,” he said. “The MO's the same. You know what an MO is? They teach you stuff like that in mail-order Pee Eye school?”

“You're telling me the new victim was strangled with a printer cable and had the word ‘exceptions' inked all over his body?”

“No words,” Frank said. “But the cable's right.”

“Then what?”

“A number.”

“A number?”

“Sixty-six.”

“Spelled out?”

“No, not spelled out.” Frank leaned in and snatched a notepad from beside my computer monitor. He wrote something and shoved the pad my way.

66!

“All over the body?” I asked.

“You got it.”

“Exclamation point and all?”

“That's right,” Frank said.

“So did you have the handwriting analyzed?” I asked.

“Maybe I should consult an astrologer, too?” Frank asked. “I suppose you don't know anything about it.”

“No,” I said. “Who was he?”

“It's interesting you know the victim was a man.”

“Fifty fifty,” I said.

“Tell me what you know about Dennis,” Frank said.

I gulped. I know Frank saw it. Maybe my face went red. He couldn't be talking about my Dennis. He shouldn't even know about my Dennis. But maybe he was talking about the new victim.

“Dennis who?” I asked. “Is that the new dead guy?”

“No,” Frank said. “The name has come up a couple of times along with a bunch of other computer freaks. Dennis is one we can't seem to get a handle on.”

“So who is the dead guy?”

“He worked for a local game company,” Frank said. “You ever hear of Challenger Video?”

“Sure,” I said, “I've probably got a game or two of theirs on my machine.”

“Randy Casey may have tested one of those games,” Frank said. “He was what you call a beta tester. You know what a beta tester is?”

I ignored his question. I jotted down the name he mentioned and asked, “So Randy Casey was the victim?”

“That's him,” Frank said. “I'm sure you didn't let the fact flash right over your head that he had something to do with the computer business. You being the world famous detective and all.” He stood up. “You may have picked up on the fact that Gerald Moffitt had something to do with the computer business, too. Not to mention Pablo Deerfield. And this Dennis guy.” He put both hands on my desk so he could lean in close. “I want you to know, Flashlight, that I don't necessarily believe you and the Deerfield woman are in the dark about where her brother is.”

“I'm sorry to hear you don't believe me, Lieutenant.” I got up, too, and came around the desk. Probably not the wisest move, but I was operating mostly on instinct. “So what are you calling this one? The Graffiti Killer?”

“If I see that in the papers, I'll know you've been shooting off your mouth, Brian.”

“Hey! I'm the very essence of discretion.”

Frank implying that I'd go to the press to pump up my own image really did hurt, but I couldn't let him see that he'd scored a point. I smiled at him; I smiled at Marvin.

“All this smiling is making you look like a goofball, Brian,” Frank said.

Marvin looked like an ape scanning the ground for bugs to eat. Or maybe my feet had suddenly become fascinating. I couldn't help looking down, too. My bright black spit-polished dancing shoes. I couldn't exactly see our faces in the shiny toes, but I could see light and shadow. I looked up.

Frank poked me in the chest. “Stay out of my way,” he said, “unless you're coming around to tell me where Pablo Deerfield is.” He poked me in the chest again. “And remember, I've got my eye on you.” He stepped back.

I didn't bother pointing out that he'd have some trouble keeping an eye on me if I was staying out of his way.

Frank nodded to Marvin, and Marvin grinned and picked up one huge foot in a scuffed black loafer and scraped it across the shine on my dancing shoes. He pushed his face in close so I'd get the point. His breath smelled like cappuccino.

He gave me a little shove, and then the two of them left. Frank never looked back, but Marvin paused at the door, glanced over his shoulder and gave me a wink.

four

The next day Prudence Deerfield came banging into my office as I put the final touches on Lulu.

“Sky?” she called. “Where are you?”

“Just a moment,” I said in falsetto from the washroom.

Being Lulu made me feel lovely. Feeling lovely is all in how you look at yourself. Objectively, I guess you'd have to say Lulu wouldn't turn many heads, but she didn't look much like Sky, and since I planned on following Frank Wallace later that afternoon, and since I was now on Frank's mind, I needed my most extreme disguise. Lulu was complicated, and even after a good night's sleep, I was still pretty fuzzy from my time at the Gotta Dance. I was doing the best I could.

I hoped I could wrap up the Wallace case in a day or two. I'd considered calling Elsie Wallace and quitting, but I knew just how she'd react. She'd tell Frank the whole story, including the part about me following him. He would find that out anyway, of course, if I ever saw him doing anything incriminating.

I came out of the washroom.

“So where's Sky?” Prudence asked. She hadn't given Lulu more than a raised eyebrow and a quick head-to-toe glance. She leaned to one side to peer around me into the washroom.

I guess you'd call what she was wearing a charcoal double-breasted business suit. The outfit was all one piece like a coat and the bottom of it was mid-thigh. The way she looked was making it hard to be Lulu.

“He's behind the door,” Lulu said.